Boat Burning at the Kennedy Center, December 11

Hometown Sounds wraps up another successful full year of hosting monthly #DCmusic showcases with a performance by Boat Burning on Tuesday December 11th! Boat Burning, a DC-based experimental rock ensemble featuring original works for multiple electric guitars, will celebrate the holiday season with an evening of shimmering harmonics. The program will include favorites old and new, selections from the ensemble’s 2018 debut EP plus a few surprises especially for the holidays.

Boat Burning is a multi-guitar, experimental music collective from the US capital that combines classically-influenced, minimalist compositions with the maximal ferocity and power of punk rock.

Featuring a core of five composer/guitarists, Boat Burning explores “maximum minimalism,” an intricate hybrid of composition and improvisation where elemental passages played by a multitude of instruments — sometimes 100 or more guitars — produce shimmering towers of densely-stacked harmonics. The result is majestic, evocative music that fuses the widescreen sweep of classical with the visceral thrill of punk.

Boat Burning’s approach is to radically embrace simplicity, community and chance, blending the power of each to build music of unexpected complexity and emotional resonance. By stripping musical passages and instrumentation way down and using special tunings, the subtle differences in each player’s technique, ability and gear are emphasized, creating striking sonic effects: phantom instruments, created by the massive additive and subtractive harmonics — piccolos, French horns, bassoons, even entire string sections — flicker into life, and then disappear…

Formed 2008 in Chapel Hill, N.C.’s roiling experimental music scene, founder Andras Fekete relocated Boat Burning to the U.S. capital in 2011 to take part in the District’s exploding musical renaissance. Since then, Boat Burning has attracted an astonishing array of collaborators from multiple cities.